AI Prototyping Pod Engineering Lead

Cloud People; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Cloud People in London is assembling an autonomous rapid prototyping pod for financial services clients. You will lead the pod, align discovery to production, own scope and delivery governance, and translate engineering progress into commitments.

This engineering leadership role requires a genuine technical foundation to read code, challenge risk, and manage a cross-functional team across AI, agentic systems, full stack and QA. Expect fast pace, ownership, and scope-agnostic planning.

Qualifications

• Engineering leadership of cross-functional software teams.
• Strong technical foundation to read code and review decisions.
• Experience delivering in projects with unclear scope and through production handoff.
• Experience in financial services or regulated environments preferred.
• AI/ML delivery experience such as LLMs, agent orchestration, or RAG.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross functional pod from discovery through to production delivery.
• Shape client requirements into a delivery plan and epics.
• Unblock dependencies and maintain multiple parallel workstreams.
• Run sprint planning, backlog and delivery governance with current docs.
• Ensure compliance with EU AI Act, data residency and audit trails.
• Challenge technical decisions and read code to assess risk.
• Communicate delivery progress to AI Director and pre-sales in business terms.
• Own the pod as a cost centre, including hiring and tooling decisions.
• Grow the team with regular feedback and a blameless culture.

Skills

Engineering management

Code literacy

Cross-functional leadership

Strategic planning

Stakeholder communication

Regulatory awareness

Tools

Python

Modern web stacks

Job description

Cloud People in London is assembling an autonomous rapid prototyping pod for financial services clients. You will lead the pod, align discovery to production, own scope and delivery governance, and translate engineering progress into commitments.

This engineering leadership role requires a genuine technical foundation to read code, challenge risk, and manage a cross-functional team across AI, agentic systems, full stack and QA. Expect fast pace, ownership, and scope-agnostic planning.